15 July 2013

Anything but water

The Political Economy of British Columbia's Carbon Tax [PDF] offers useful insights. On a related note, I wonder how these taxes (on carbon consumption) will interact with carbon accounting that's linked to production? China, e.g., "produces" a lot of carbon, but carbon embedded in exports would not be produced except for the consumption demand in the US and EU. Cap and trade makes it easier to hide carbon than a tax. Interesting...

Here's a new paper [PDF] comparing Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to GDP (the conventional but flawed measure of progress). GPI captures other factors like sustainability and happiness. The authors find that GPI does not increase above GDP of $7,000, after which point "income" may be negative (e.g., consuming the environment or free time)